


tough to be tender

by anarchetypal



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF, Sugar Pine 7 RPF
Genre: GTA AU, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Torture Interrogation, Violence, canon-typical amounts of vaping, cib is a scarily competent buffoon, darker timeline, or at least alluding to it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 13:03:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12795156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anarchetypal/pseuds/anarchetypal
Summary: Cib tilts his head in some pastiche of curiosity. “Are you a good listener?” he murmurs, smiling faintly. It doesn’t reach his eyes.Steven watches the guy sneer, watches him open his mouth and have to spit blood before he can respond.“What,motherfucker?”The leather of Cib’s glove creaks as he tightens his one-handed grip on the bat, lets the nail-riddled head swing gently just inches from the floor. To the untrained eye, his body language almost looks relaxed, and he takes a couple of lazy steps forward.Then his voice goes hard. “Are you agood listener,”he says again, and then, mockingly,“motherfucker.”





	tough to be tender

There are certain things, as a crew boss, that Steven simply finds himself above having to do. That’s a perk of being in charge. You get to designate shit.

He usually designates interrogation to James or Jeremy. They’re practiced. Good at what they do.

Sometimes, he has to send in Cib.

The guy tied to the chair in the warehouse, the one who’s already suffered a couple rounds at the hands of Jeremy but still won’t give anything up—the one Cib is approaching right now as Steven watches from the side—Steven had hired him to be an informant a few months ago.

Turned out the dude was really good at his job.

So good he started selling off SP7 information to the highest bidder. When Steven sent James off to confront him, James returned nursing a gunshot wound and a concussion. It’d taken a small team to subdue the informant and drag him to the warehouse.

Steven’s not _mad_ , alright. He’s just _disappointed_.

Then again, he’s siccing Cib on the poor idiot. Maybe he’s a little mad. Mostly he just needs to know exactly what this guy has told to exactly who. Hell, if it all turns up roses, maybe they can still get some use out of him.

After Jeremy doesn’t manage to get the dude to talk, Steven calls for Cib, who, ever-dramatic, enters the warehouse with a cloud of smoke spilling from his mouth, a baseball bat trailing from one hand.

The guy and Cib regard each other in silence for a few moments. Steven almost feels bad for him. Cib can be sadistic on his best days, but the stupid bastard had gone and hurt James, and Cib doesn’t tend to take too kindly to James getting hurt.

It makes him upset, James being injured. A guy’s gotta find a way to work through those emotions. It’s not healthy to bottle them up. Steven highly advocates taking therapeutic actions.

Just turns out Cib prefers his therapy to end in blood.

Cib tilts his head in some pastiche of curiosity. “Are you a good listener?” he murmurs, smiling faintly. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

Steven watches the guy sneer, watches him open his mouth and have to spit blood before he can respond. “ _What_ , motherfucker?”

The leather of Cib’s glove creaks as he tightens his one-handed grip on the bat, lets the nail-riddled head swing gently just inches from the floor. To the untrained eye, his body language almost looks relaxed, and he takes a couple of lazy steps forward.

Then his voice goes hard. “Are you a _good listener,”_ he says again, and then, mockingly, “ _motherfucker.”_

The guy doesn’t even get the chance to fire back a reply before Cib moves, raw and sadistic and ruthless—the poor bastard shrieks when the bat smashes against his knees, the scream petering to a hitched and shaky whimper when Cib lets the bat drop to the concrete.

Steven wrinkles his nose at the fleshy sound of forcible dislocation, the crack of bone, and sighs. The guy’s useless to them if he can’t fucking walk; they’re gonna have to put the asshole down like an injured racehorse when this is all over, when they’ve got the information they need. Then again, he’s probably not going to survive his encounter with Cib, anyway.

Would it kill Cib to be a little more careful with his abuse? Steven’s trying to run a fucking business here, that’s all he’s saying.

Cib examines his nails and picks at the chipping black paint for a moment, then glances back over at the guy, who can’t seem to look at Cib for the pain or the fear or both.

“So that’s a no,” Cib says conversationally. “That’s okay.” He steps forward again, ignores the way the guy flinches to grab him by the jaw and lift his head, force their eyes to meet.

He smiles again. It still doesn’t reach his eyes.

“That’s okay,” he repeats, like a kindness. “I’ll teach you.”

Steven leaves him to it, closes the door to the warehouse as the screams start again.

He doesn’t know exactly when Cib first showed up in Los Santos, but the guy fits in like he was raised here, a creature born of asphalt and smoke and neon. Half the time the words coming out of his mouth make no sense at all, but he shows moments of intense lucidity that make Steven wonder if the inane personality is just an act.

For all that Cib seems to be an open book, Steven’s not convinced some of his antics aren’t just a show—make everybody look at the shiny distraction over there and then nobody’s got their eyes on his cards or the way he’s tucking aces into his sleeves.

He’s fiercely loyal, though, and that at least seems genuine. Either way, Steven’s pretty content to leave Cib to his zero brain-to-mouth filter and his vaping and his occasional bloodlust.

James is a little off his face on painkillers when Steven shows up at his apartment later. Never let it be said he’s not a good friend; he makes sure James has water and gets Netflix going for him and only films a little bit of his opiate-induced mumbling.

His phone buzzes in his pocket halfway through their third episode of The Office. James is dozing where he’s stretched out on the couch, and Steven’s struggling to keep his eyes open slumped in the armchair next to it. Yawning, he retrieves his phone and pulls up a text from Cib. It’s a list of names and information, and, to Cib’s credit, it comes a lot faster than Steven thought it would.

The front door crashes open a few minutes later. "I am _unbelievably_ hard right now!" comes Cib's cheerful voice.

Steven jumps. “ _Jesus,”_ he says, sitting up and watching Cib waltz into the living room. “Take it easy, man, the baby is sleeping.”

“The baby is _not_ sleeping,” James mumbles from underneath two blankets, stirring. “The baby is just super, mega high.”

“Oh, sweet,” says Cib. He vaults himself over the back of the couch and lands in a heap inches from James’s head. “Are they good drugs. Will you share. I’ll trade you all the lint in my pockets and the gum currently in my mouth.”

“Can you not— The man has a concussion and you almost dropped 170 pounds of Canadian Fuckboy on his head,” Steven says, exasperated.

“Sorry,” Cib offers. He gives James’s head a mostly gentle pat. Apparently he’s back to his Lovable Oaf setting, all of the hardness and sadism melted away.

“Thanks for the info,” Steven says, lifting his phone a little.

“No problemo,” Cib replies. “Uh, cleanup on aisle five, by the way.”

“You mean the warehouse?”

“Obvs.”

“Is he dead?” Steven asks, more curious than anything.

Cib shrugs and fumbles in his pockets for his vape. “Dunno. He fell asleep, wouldn’t wake up no matter how hard I hit him. Got bored ‘n left.”

“ _Fell asleep,”_ James snorts. He shifts enough to raise an eyebrow at Steven, and, yeah, the dude’s long dead, possibly in pieces. James grabs the vape from Cib’s hands and sucks down a lungful of smoke, blows it out in Cib’s face.

Steven thinks about the broken body on the warehouse floor and watches Cib, face soft with childlike amusement, gently wrestle James for the vape. There’s blood on the collar of his shirt.

Whatever the hell Cib is, Steven’s just glad he’s on their side.


End file.
